Over-50

"The Last Duel" - Storyline for "Law & Order SVU," But Set in 14 Century

"The Last Duel" takes up the soul-wrenching decision of a woman, along with her husband, to disclose her rape by a powerful well-connected man. Here is a video excerpt. 

Yes, that storyline could be the plot line for an episode of "Law & Order SVU."

However, it's set in the 14th century. As often happens in  "SVU," one takeaway is if that the price of truth could be too high. So, think carefully about going out there to proclaim the "truth" of what you perceive your experience. Interestingly, the producer uses a Rashomon style screenplay. The audience is presented with different scenarios of what could have happened.

In asserting her claim of rape by squire Jacques Le Gris, Marguerite eventually is responsible for involving her husband Jean de Carrouges in a duel. A true story, that was the last official duel in France. If her husband doesn't win, the law has it that she will be stripped and burned to death. That process could take about 30 minutes of suffering before she died. Right before the duel she questions her decision. 

The husband does win. And Marguerite goes on to live a long happy life with her son. He might have been conceived during the rape. Before that during five years of marriage, she didn't become pregnant. Her husband, a skilled soldier, died a few years after the duel in the Crusades. 

Another meme in this film is that power and religion beliefs can derail justice. The duel wouldn't have had needed to have been if the legal systems hadn't been controlled by the existing power structure. Also, the orthodoxy had been that many legal verdicts  would be handed down by God. It had been religious dogma that if a woman contended rape and her husband couldn't prove that she would be burned alive. 

What the film neutralizes is the current rage over the current legal system. For instance, The Wall Street Journal exposed that many federal judges hadn't recused themselves from presiding over cases in which they had a financial interest. That is prohibited by federal law.

Jusstice was also highly flawed in the 14 century.

Religion complicated that.

English majors might remember The Pardoner in Chauer's "Canterbury Tales." He sold fake indulgences which he promised would erase all sins on one's soul and facilitate a straight trip to heaven. Another pilgrim had been the lawyer who feigned being hyper-busy. That could have attracted new clients with a kind of "false advertising."

In addition to the takeaways, another reason to pop for the movie ticket is that array of stars. They include Ben Affleck.

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Laughing at The Rules - We Never Grow Up Totally, Do We!

“'These men shoveled thousands and thousands of dollars of foreign money to U.S. politicians, laughing about how they were breaking the law along the way,' [Aline] Flodr [Assistant US Attorney] said in the prosecution’s opening statement in the trial [of Lev Parnas, et al. ]'"  - John Gerstein, Politico, October 15, 2021.

That hubris ethos mirrors the confident values of the members Sopranos tribe, especially as they enjoyed themselves at Bada Bing. 

And that could probably what irks the prosecution: scorn for the standard rules of law. Humor is one of the most cruel and effective weapons. That observation goes back to John's Milton epic "Paradise Lost." Satan heaped humor on righteous values. Ouch.

The trial is about Parnas' alleged filtering of $100,000 from Russian businessperson Andrey Muraviev to political candidates as a kind of bribe nudge. It's contended those funds were intended to grease the wheels for Muraviev to establish a cannabis enterprise in the U.S. Parnas is connected to Rudy Giuliani.

Parnas' lawyer is Joseph Bondy who argues that his client did not know the alleged stealth agenda. Of course, ignorance of the law is no excuse.

With "The Many Saints of Newark" in movie theatres, the fascination with the Sopranos hubris is back. That could hover as presence in the courtroom.

Few of us have outgrown our adolescent love of expressing scorn for the rules. And outwitting the system. Even supposedly fully grown up, we admire the bad guys.

It would be wise for Parnas not to smirk during the trial.

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"No Time To Die" - We Bought 36% of Tickets

The new James Bond film "No Time to Die" grossed $56 million in the U.S. during its debut weekend. And, 36% of the tickets had been purchased by us over-45.

That's not a surprise. After all the James Bond franchise is 60 years old. So we came of age with the various James Bonds. But what could be a surprise is our hunger for old-line values. 

This version of Bond, played by Daniel Craig, plays out traditional values of caring, loyalty, ingenuity, and sacrifice. Those used to be aggregated and labeled "character." 

We baby boomers recall filling out our applications to college in which what was required was a paragraph or two on character. Those were to be a key part of our personal essay. We had to provide a specific instance in which we exhibited character even if that had been a difficult situation. 

With the media outlets reporting on so much corruption, including in federal courts, it was uplifting to experience how character shaped Bond's decisions and behavior. 

It might be a useful idea for institutions of higher education to bring back character for the personal essay. Currently the focus is on how the applicant overcame adversity. 

Thank you all those in the loop for "No Time to Die." There still is a sense of goodness in the world. 

Intuitive guidance about your career. Drop your story line and open to extreme possibility. Sliding Scale Fees. Please make an appointment for a complimentary consultation at janegenova374@gmail.com.

But, Could You Be Shady Enough?

"NEED 5 SHADY people SHADY RUTHLESS PEOPLE - NO BACKGROUND CHECKS (NYC)" - Help-wanted on Craigslist New York City section.

Of course, the description of the work that follows what's in the subject head is equally lacking in the usual corporatese or we-are-changing-the-world startup rhetoric. 

Also, another of-course is that the compensation promised is big-time.

Less is more. PAN Communications found consumers are only paying attention to about 1/16^th of your content. So, together let's create the marketing communications that engage them. Fees customized for your unique budget. Complimentary consultation - janegenova374@gmail.com.

The Memoir - A Wobbly Platform for Your Legacy, New Professional Opportunities.

Will Katie Couric's memoir "Going There" destroy her legacy in media?

That's a real danger in opening up and putting whatever out there about a life lived.

What seems like sorting out and connecting the dots to you could be taken as anything from uncalled-for nastiness to even illegal. You may not be forgiven. What you assume will be a platform for creating your legacy and new professional opportunities, forget it.

In the influential New York Post, Maureen Callahan actually tells the world not to buy Couric's memoir.

As Callahan hammers and as students of literature always knew but authors might not realize: They disclose more about themselves than they realize. And readers might not like that, not at all. Yes, that could be how your memoir also plays out.

A recent example is fallen former McKinsey head Rajat Gupta's memoir "Mind Without Fear." It's a rehash of his tough beginnings in India (which we had already heard too much about) and his innocence of the crime of insider trader (for which he had been convicted and gone to prison). Likely that blew any chance Gupta had for a comeback in America. He does have his cheerleaders back in India. The marketplace gave Gupta's memoir a thumbs-down. Its ranking is in the Amazon abyss: 1,027,900. How humiliating. 

Here's what Callahan says about Couric's "Going There":

"Couric reveals more about herself than she seems to realize: Namely, that she is the kind of terrible woman who hates most other women and likes only those she considers inferior, not as successful, no threat in the looks department. It’s the kind of self-loathing that allows her to defend monsters like Matt Lauer and blame all the pretty young things for bringing this on themselves."

Of course, given the dark aspects of human nature, many will buy this book for the gossip. Due out there on October 26, 2021, it ranks on Amazon very high: 29.

But that can quickly peter out. Gossip has a short shelf life. Folks quickly move onto the next scandal. 

Meanwhile, those Couric vilifies in her book and their allies can turn on her - viciously. They are powerful people. Not only might she never eat lunch in this town again. She could find herself living the next 15 years or so (she's only 64 years old) without significant professional opportunities. We are tending to continue to work into our late 70s and beyond. Clint Eastwood is 91 years old. He recently produced the film "Cry Macho."

On the other hand, Couric could leverage "Going There" as the bridge to The Next. 

Nastiness is the ethos of this era. So many of the best-sellers vomit up ugliness. They range from "The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power" by Max Chafkin to "The Caesars Palace Coup" by Sujeet Indep and Max Frumes. And there are no signs that demand for books dishing the dirt will let up. 

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Happy-Clappy Visions Dancing in Our Baby Boomer Heads - From the Counterculture to ESG

"US corporate governance norms are based on the shareholder value model, which enshrines maximizing shareholder profits as a company’s raison d’être." - Anna Held in "The Problem with Corporate 'Values'" published by VOX, September 29, 2021.

And, it is governance - which isn't sexy like the environmental and social part of ESG - that is shaping the actual behavior of corporations.

Much of the media coverage about ESG really is only happy-clappy rhetoric.

The Friedman Doctrine, which had become standard in business thinking in the 1970s, remains intact. It champions maximizing returns to shareholders. It also throws shade on the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR).

As The Harvard Business Review points out, CSR preceeded the current embrace of social justice. It hammers that what is positioned and packaged as a values revolution now - that is, ESG - is qualitatively different than the old-line CSR. ESG is not CSR. There is no continiuum from the CSR ideology to what's already hardened into ESG values orthodoxy. CSR was about social issue marketing and philanthropy. ESG is about a revolution. 

About 80% of corporations have posted on their website their values. But, usually they embed platitudes about the supposed right thing to do or are meaningless because they don't provide examples of that supposed right thing to do. 

Face it, society may be a long way from experiencing a shift to a more humane model of business. 

This could be analogous to the expectations of a political paradigm shift during the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Those inside that movement believed it was happening. Those outside knew better. The severe recession in the early 1970s put the kibosh on that vision of power to the people. 

Those of us baby boomers who were on the front lines of the counterculture wound up feeling the pain of disappointment. We came to realize how slowly political and other kinds of change become the new norm. That's why we are wary of the current hopes about business values becoming people-oriented.

That's us.

There are also the businesses which have to do a highwire act in this era of ESG values. They have to both satisfy their shareholders and demonstrate good faith about the fundamentals of ESG. 

That's exactly where law firms are finding new ways to serve their corporate clients.

More and more of them have developed practices which go by monikers related to ESG. The purpose of those ESG practices is to guide corporations through this terrain filled with stock-price, branding, board oversight, media, labor relations, community, political, and legal ESG landmines.

An early adopter in providing this unique ESG service has been Paul Weiss, chaired by Bard Karp. That was way back in April 2020. It was way ahead of its peers in picking up on the extreme trouble corporations could get into as they are pulled in so many directions.  

Here is how Paul Weiss has structured its ESG mission:

"Business leaders face greater pressure to increase their organizations’ resilience while simultaneously addressing social issues of importance to stakeholders. Our advisory practice helps companies navigate the legal, business and political ramifications of developing and implementing ESG initiatives. We advise on matters such as stakeholder engagement, corporate governance, crisis management, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, diversity and inclusion, ethics and compliance."

No one knows how any rethinking of business values will play out.

But society would be wise not to have too high expectations.

And business should recognize it's a sitting duck for attack from a growing number of constituencies. 

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It Wasn't Always This Way: Trust So Broken in Courts and Federal Reserve

"I'm shocked, shocked to find gambling is going on here."  - Captain Renault, when shutting down Rick's Cafe Americain. At the same time he gets handed his winnings from his earlier visit to the Cafe.

That same ethos pervades the reporting of The Wall Street Journal about more than 130 federal judges who violated both U.S. law and judicial ethics. They did that - many of them are shocked, shocked to find out - through presiding over cases related to companies in which there was a financial interest. Either they or their families had owned stock in those corporations.

That had been turned up when the WSJ did an investigation. It notes that it had found:

" ... that judges have improperly failed to disqualify themselves from 685 court cases around the nation since 2010."

The ramifications could be huge. The WSJ continues:

"Altered to the violations ... 56 of the judges have directed court clerks to notify parties in 329 lawsuits that they should have recused themselves. That means new judges might be assigned, potentially upending rulings."

Some judges played cute. In Colorado, Judge Lewis Babcok was confronted about the violation associated with overseeing a Comcast subsidiary case. He or his family at the time owned between $15,001 and $50,000 of Comcast stock. His ruling was in the favor of Comcast. His response was not only to blame internal procedures. He added, notes the WSJ, "Thank you for helping me stay on my toes the way I am supposed to." That is even more over-the-top reply than shock, shock. Meanwhile, a Comcast public relations representative did not comment.

Obviously, confidence in the U.S. legal system is shaken.

This follows our being unhinged by the reporting yesterday, also by the WSJ, that two heads at the Federal Reserve are stepping down. Here is an excerpt from that coverage:

"Mr. [Eric] Rosengren’s decision [to resign] follows the recent disclosure that he traded stocks and other investments related to the real-estate industry last year while also helping to set monetary policy. Disclosure forms for Mr. [Robert] Kaplan showed many millions of dollars in trading in stocks and investments such as stock-market futures and interest-rate funds taking place since he became Dallas Fed president in 2015. While central-bank disclosure forms require officials to provide dates for trading, Mr. Kaplan’s form referred to 'multiple' dates and his bank has declined to provide any transaction dates."

And then there's the once-revered U.S. Supreme Court. The recent Gallup poll found that only 40% approved what SCOTUS was doing. The growing perception is that the majority of justices are leaning into politics and not paying adequate attention to points of law. 

There's less and less to hang our hat on in terms of institutions we trust. Have greed and politics transformed the America our Founding Fathers created into a corrupt type of banana republic? The public interest be damned. One can almost hear John Adams and Alexander Hamilton weeping. 

No, this isn't how government had been presented to us baby boomers in high school.

Less is more. PAN Communications found consumers are only paying attention to about 1/16^th of your content. So, together let's create the marketing communications that engage them. Fees customized for your unique budget. Complimentary consultation - janegenova374@gmail.com.

Retirement Investing - Should You Factor in What Corporation Stands for on the Environment, Social Justice, and Governance?

The probes of Deutsche Bank's DWS, both here in the U.S. and in Germany, are raising questions about ESG investing.

Nerd Wallet defines that asset class as:

"ESG investing is a form of sustainable investing that considers environmental, social and governance factors to judge an investment’s financial returns and its overall impact. An investment’s ESG score measures the sustainability of an investment in those specific categories."

Essentially the ESG investing niche remains wild-west territory. It's not too much of an exaggeration to say that an ESG investment is anything you want to say it is. There is little regulation. More kinds of DWS investigations will likely occur.

Now, though, the issues associated with ESG investing are being viewed through a different kind of lens. That is by experts at Morningstar Steve Wendel and Samantha Lamas, reports MarketWatch. And the focus is on investor behavior. That is, how investors make decisions. 

The Morningstar findings indicate that ESG criteria represent only one factor in choices about investing. The process is complex. It becomes even more complex in that scary matter of growing funds for retirement. Among what's considered are the usual concerns. Those range from tax efficiency to how much the investors trust their financial advisor. 

On the one hand, yes, currently 33% of US assets are in what are classified as sustainable investments.

However, as Morningstar emphasizes, investing remains a financial transaction. Focusing on how much the corporation fulfills environmental, social, and governmance criteria is kind of an add-on. Simply put, given all things being equal, some investors will prefer to go with a corporation with that value system. 

Meanwhile, businesses are struggling to position and package themselves as sustainable and/or to prevent being labeled as violating ESG criteria.

Those issues have created whole new challenges for corporations. They can't been ignored. Otherwise the media, employees, communities, regulators, Congress, and, of course, investors will pounce on them. Many recall the successful coup at Exxon for board seats by Engine Number-One . It orchestrated the investor pile-on for more green policies.  More recently, it has turned its attention to Chevron.

Recent research by the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University documented that the corporate general counsel is worried about the ESG phenomenon. 

That's why the relatively new practice in large law firms, which goes by monikers related to ESG, is becoming more and more important. Its purpose is to guide corporations through this terrain filled with stock-price, branding, board oversight, media, labor relations, community, political, and legal landmines.

An early adopter in providing this unique ESG service has been Paul Weiss, chaired by Bard Karp. That was way back in April 2020.

What Paul Weiss likely picked up on is this: The values disruption was not a 21st-century second-decade version of corporate social responsbility (CSR). In the Harvard Business Review, Lily Zheng points  out CSR had been around for more than half a century, with best practices. They ranged from social issue marketing to philanthropy.

ESG constitues a whole different values sandbox corporations are being forced to play in. There is a different expectation of what is in the "public interest."

Here is how Paul Weiss has structured its ESG mission:

"Business leaders face greater pressure to increase their organizations’ resilience while simultaneously addressing social issues of importance to stakeholders. Our advisory practice helps companies navigate the legal, business and political ramifications of developing and implementing ESG initiatives. We advise on matters such as stakeholder engagement, corporate governance, crisis management, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, diversity and inclusion, ethics and compliance."

The stock price can be the urgent matter for corporations having ESG-related problems. The classic example has become Activision Blizzard's from the 52-week high of about 104 to the recent price at about 76. There also had been a plunge to about 71. Here is Law and More's latest analysis of the pickle Activision is in. It had just settled with the EEOC for $17 million in payments to its employees who had endured sexual harassment. 

Law firms can address those catastrophes and prevent others. 

The future of ESG investing is in play. However, the scrutiny of business values beyond the bottom line seems to becoming a new standard for constituencies to interact with a business. They range from government leaders to consumers.

Less is more. PAN Communications found consumers are only paying attention to about 1/16^th of your content. So, together let's create the marketing communications that engage them. Fees customized for your unique budget. Complimentary consultation - janegenova374@gmail.com.

From U.S. Supreme Court to Federal Reserve - Character Doesn't Count

Since the recent Gallup poll showcasing only a 40% approval rate for SCOTUS, more of us are taking a hard (untrusting) look at that high court. Remember the reverence we once had for that institution. That seems so far away. And now we wonder if it had been naive. So many of the justices seem politcal hacks. 

Also it makes sense to rethink our trust in the Federal Reserve. That too had been a pillar of the American government.  The Wall Street Journal reports:

"Mr. [Eric] Rosengren’s decision [to resign] follows the recent disclosure that he traded stocks and other investments related to the real-estate industry last year while also helping to set monetary policy. Disclosure forms for Mr. [Robert] Kaplan showed many millions of dollars in trading in stocks and investments such as stock-market futures and interest-rate funds taking place since he became Dallas Fed president in 2015. While central-bank disclosure forms require officials to provide dates for trading, Mr. Kaplan’s form referred to 'multiple' dates and his bank has declined to provide any transaction dates."

Where is the old-fashioned sense of character?

Also, so much of the social injustice tearing apart our society seems rooted in just that: a lack of character. Law firm Paul Weiss, chaired by Brad Karp, has made a mission of exposing injustice and crafting collective solutions. That ugliness ranges from voter suppression to antisemitism. 

Character as not counting wasn't always that way. We baby boomers recall how the personal essay for college applications required us to provide an example of how we had demonstrated character. That certainly got us thinking. And it was with that mindset that we began college, then our professional lives.

That was then.

Currently, I know from coaching the writing of those essays, the preoccupation with character has been replaced by an example of overcoming adversity. The focus is on winning against odds. Integrity? Essentially irrelevant.

Perhaps colleges should circle back to the matter of character on that all-important personal essay for applications. That could get the next generation of leaders to know that character matters. More than power. More than money. More than even winning. 

Less is more. PAN Communications found consumers are only paying attention to about 1/16^th of your content. So, together let's create the marketing communications that engage them. Fees customized for your unique budget. Complimentary consultation - janegenova374@gmail.com.

The Death of the "Fun" Workplace

A blast of arctic air should be going through the U.S. business community. And law firms which have proven-out ESG (Environmental Social Governance) practices will be doing breakthrough kinds of assignments.

AAll this has been put in play by the extraordinary probe by the SEC of video-game maker Activision Blizzard. 

Bloomberg Law reports:

" ... the latest probe from the country’s securities regulator raises the stakes for the company’s leadership, with the SEC subpoenaing current employees, including executives, to put them on the record about what they knew about Activision’s workplace culture, and opening the door to more lawsuits from investors and alleged victims about the company’s internal response."

The executives such as Chief Executive Officer Bobby Kotick are being investigated.

It could be discovered that they knew about the workplace toxicity. That toxicity is being positioned and packaged by the feds as an actual health and safety issue. Yes, that's the lens through which the federal government is viewing cultural matters. No longer is there just something rotten in the state of Denmark. It is affecting the health and safety of those who are working there.

If the Activision Blizzard executives knew about the rot and made public statements denying those realities then they could be accused of misleading. In addition, investors could and probably will pile on them for allegedly misusing funds in the process of scrambling to clean up this legal, stock price, and public relations mess. Expect a string of C-Suite resignations.

The board of directors isn't sitting pretty either. What did the members know? Expect too resignations there. And what was the general counsel doing or not doing? Recently the general counsel for Blizzard Entertainment Claire Hart had stepped down. 

Observers of this move by the SEC into the cultural matters of a corporation speculate this could be the beginning of greater federal involvement in workplace issues. The key issues could be harassment and bias. As is well-known, the Biden Administration is focused on workplace cultural matters ranging from inclusion to employee well-being. 

The pickle Activision Blizzard is in could have been prevented. The scandal at Fox News triggered by sexual harassment allegations against Roger Ailes in 2016 should have been a cautionary tale for supposed "fun" workplaces. They could have parachuted in consultants to reset the culture.

Obviously way back in 2016 values were beginning to change. Constituencies, ranging from investors to advertisers, were no longer going to ignore exploitative behavior. Overall, the new expectations of what was expected of corporate conduct went under the umbrella concept of ESG. 

Paul Weiss had picked up on this developing ethos earlier than other law firms. Back in April 2020, its Chairperson Brad Karp launched its Sustainability & Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Advisory Practice. Its mission covered all what-ifs, as you can see here:

"Business leaders face greater pressure to increase their organizations’ resilience while simultaneously addressing social issues of importance to stakeholders. Our advisory practice helps companies navigate the legal, business and political ramifications of developing and implementing ESG initiatives. We advise on matters such as stakeholder engagement, corporate governance, crisis management, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, diversity and inclusion, ethics and compliance."

In terms of intense federal involvement in workplace culture, Activision Blizzard is the canary in the mine.

Those observing what is happening right now and what could happen can't miss this: Not paying attention to the values disruption put in play way back with the ouster of Ailes can be catastrophic.

By time the extent of the problem became evident to the Activision Blizzard brass and it called in WilmerHale for an internal investigation it was too late. 

Already the stock price had taken a hit. It hasn't recovered. How many investor lawsuits will there be about that?

Executive careers are derailed. 

Talent is likely to flee.

Competition is gleeful. 

The media centers have grabbed onto this story and they won't be letting it go. 

One definite takeaway: Call in your outside law firm's head of the ESG practice today. Fix what can be fixed. Prevent further fallout. 

Less is more. PAN Communications found consumers are only paying attention to about 1/16^th of your content. So, together let's create the marketing communications that engage them. Fees customized for your unique budget. Complimentary consultation - janegenova374@gmail.com.